Talkin’ ‘Bout Singin’ with the Cast of ‘The Sideshow Musical Revue’

By Alison Zeidman, on April 9th, 2013

This Thursday, The Sideshow continues on its mission to get performers to try new things and venture out of their comfort zones with a musical revue starring a cast of local improvisers—most of whom have little musical theater experience beyond karaoke at O’Neals.”Trying different things is how I feel I’ve gotten better,” says Mike Marbach, Sideshow creator and producer. “The more experience you get outside of improv, the more you’re going to bring into your improv.”

The theme of the show is love, from wanting it and trying to find it to hating it and decrying it. We went to a recent rehearsal and got to talk to a few of the cast members about the songs they’ll be performing.

Kristen Schier (The Amie & Kristen Show, The N Crowd): One of the songs that I’m singing is the song “Alone” by Heart. I chose that one because I love to sing it in karaoke, but the reason I love to sing is because I’ve always wanted to be a rock star. But I never had the confidence to. I know this sounds corny or whatever but honestly doing comedy over the years and learning about confidence and teaching people that it’s all about confidence has given me the confidence to sing the way that song requires and the other songs in the show require. I’m not the best singer, but I love singing and I’m still confident in what I can do. I don’t think I could do it the same without having been taught that in the improv classes that I’ve taken and it’s good to be able to step into a different medium, so to speak, and just run with it.

Erin Pitts (ZaoGao): I’m doing “There are Worse Things I Could Do” from Grease. It was a song I could sing decently I guess [laughs]. There will be a little bit of comedy throughout the show. In mine I think I’m just going to be singing—I hope people don’t laugh at me if I’m trying to be serious about it! But as far as improv goes, I don’t know if I’m really borrowing anything from improv, just the acting part and the being comfortable in front of people part.

Brett Knobloch (Asteroid!): I’m singing a song called “Making Love Alone.” The song is about loving yourself. I figured everyone was going to be doing songs about someone else, so I thought it would be nice to do a song about yourself. It’s a song that was written for Bernadette Peters, and she did it on Saturday Night Live. It’s sort of just a straight-up cabaret piece, and that’s how I’m going to do it. It’s almost like this pretty ballad—it’s more suggestive than it is lewd. And that’s why I like it, the humor comes from the subtlety.

Chris Caletta (Hot Dish): I’m doing “Earth Angel,” from Back to the Future. I think it’s a great movie. I am going to break down at some point [like in the film], and hopefully we can come up with a twist on it too, I’m not quite sure. I just wanted to try something different. I do music stuff too, so it’ll be neat to bring it into the comedy realm and see how that goes.

Milkshake (Asteroid!): I don’t have any musical theater background whatsoever. I’m singing “Love Stinks,” which is more of a classic rock song. It’s very disparaging of love I suppose; very teen angst-y. Mike thought it was really appropriate for me to do because of I guess when Asteroid! does [the improv singing game] “Hot Spot” in warm-ups. I’m not a J. Geils fan…but I guess I mock it well? I’m not mocking it but I can affect that in games that we play and comedic situations. I think what I’m supposed to do is break out of the very theatrical musical number [which precedes my song] and just sauce it up and be with the audience.